Symbols of a Short Story Symbolism is everywhere from bathroom signs, movies, books even a dashboard on a car. In this essay, I will be analyzing symbols from the short story Beauty and The Beast. In Beauty and the Beast there are so many symbols all throughout the story but I will be focusing on the most important ones. In “Beauty and the Beast,” Beaumont uses the character Beauty to symbolize security, compassion and honesty. Beauty and the Beast is a story that is loved by many. One of the many ways symbolism is shown in this story is by words and objects, like the rose. Word symbolism is very significant in this story and it shows a lot about the author. Symbolism works in this story by showing the true characters. It also …show more content…
Compassion radiates from Beauty. Beauty isn’t like the rest of her siblings she is nice, happy, empathetic and true to herself. She doesn’t care about materialistic things. For example, when Beauty’s father lost all his money she was the only one out of all her siblings that didn’t just sit there and complain, she still loved her father as she did before when he had all his money. Beauty also shows compassion to the Beast by giving him a chance and not just seeing him as a scary beast. Beauty may be a symbol of compassion but that’s also one of her characteristics. Beauty and the Beast is a story of a girl and her wealthy merchant father. Beauty is the girls name and she has two sisters and three brothers who are the opposite of her, greedy and self-centered. Beauty’s father ended up losing his wealth and they became of low class and poor, which resulted in all members of the family to go to work. One day on the way to pick some stuff up Beauty’s father asks what everyone wants and Beauty asks for a rose and then her father sets out and plans to return home soon but ends up getting lost in the forest and can’t find his way back. Beauty’s father wakes up in a castle in a bed with food for him but he doesn’t know who has done this courteous deed for him. As he was getting ready to leave the father remembers Beauty’s rose so he picks her a rose from the garden. The Beast shows up
The Original 1991 Beauty and the Beast movie has many symbols. One of them is Lumière the candle holder. In about half way through the movie Belle goes to the west-wing when it is forbidden. When she enters the beast’s room she sees a flower but right when she was about to touch it the beast comes in and gives a big roar to frighten her off. It is then when she wants to escape and go back home with her father. When she was grabbing her coat to exit you hear her share a small piece of dialogue with the Lumière and Cogsworth. In this dialogue they asked Belle where she is going and she says she can’t be there another minute. With the cold wind coming in from the outside Lumière’s candles extinguish. Showing that the hope to turn back into their
Both Beasts are willing to do and give anything for beauty and the girl to keep them happy. Although Beast kept beauty hostage, he is gentleman enough to give her, her own space if she does not want anything to do with him: “you alone are mistress here; you need only bid me gone, if my presence is troublesome, and I will immediately withdraw” (LePrince de Beaumont 6). Beast being kind to Beauty is important because the goal is for her to want to stay with him forever. Since he shows compassion and
The fairytale “Beauty and the Beast” by Jeanne-Marie LePrince De Beaumont was produced in France in 1756. The story is about a wealthy merchant with six children, three boys and three girls. With the story’s primary focus on the girls, we learn that the youngest of the daughters, named Beauty, was admired for her kindness and well behaved manners. Due to Beauty being the town favorite, her sisters grew jealous and hated her. When Beauty’s father falls in debt with a Beast, her father sends her off to live with the Beast. In the end, Beauty gets to know the Beast and accepts to be his wife. Although, Beauty and the Beast have their ‘happily ever after’, social and economic complications hindered their relationship.
Symbolism in literature is using an object to portray a different, deeper meaning in a story. Symbols represent ideas or qualities that the author has maneuvered into his or her story that has meaning. There can be multiple symbols in a story or just one. It is up to the reader to interpret the meaning of the symbols and their significance to the story. While reading a story, symbols may not become clear until the very end, once the climax is over, and the falling action is covered. In William Faulkner’s, “A Rose for Emily,” there are multiple examples of symbolism that occur throughout the story.
Alfred Whitehead, an English mathematician and philosopher, once said, “Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life.” In almost every story, there is some form of symbolism being used. Sometimes it is used in the characters, the setting, certain objects, the weather patterns, etc. Not only does symbolism have a great effect on the story itself, but it affects how the story is perceived. “Young Goodman Brown”, “The Minister’s Black Veil”, and “The Birthmark” are all full of many forms of symbolism. The themes of these stories are shown through the symbolism of the characters, their traits, and the objects.
Symbolic objects can be found in real life and in most cases in literature. Symbolism in literature it gives a story depth and a deeper meaning of the story and its characters. In Louise Eldrich’s “The Red Convertible” the car becomes a symbolic representation of the brother’s bond.
“Beauty and The Beast” is a classic well known romantic Disney movie that depicts the gender role of men and women in society. The film is based upon a smart young female protagonist named Belle who is imprisoned by a self-centered young prince after he has been turned into a beast. They both learn to love each other in the end and throughout the film there are several examples shown portraying the roles of gender. In the film the main characters Gaston and the Beast portray themselves as rude, conceited and more important than the woman even though the main character Belle is a woman whom is considered odd, yet smart, and unrelated to most women in society.
This foregrounds potential of narcissism within Beauty. The Beast allows Beauty to go back to London to be with her father under the condition that she must return before winter is over. While in London, she, “[sends] him flowers, white roses in return for the ones he had given her; and when she left the florist, she experienced a sudden sense of perfect freedom, as if she had jus escaped from an unknown danger” (48). With this gesture, Beauty feels all her debts are settled and she no longer has an obligation to the Beast. When she puts on her robe of fur, she becomes her own beast, showing a parallel between her and the Beast.
Symbolism in literature is used to give an entirely different meaning which is more significant and much deeper to a story using objects representing other objects and giving them a sense that is different from their literal meaning. The meaning of the symbols used to depend on the reader, and there is no universal meaning for symbols used because their purpose is inherent in the symbol itself. In both stories, the authors use symbols to give different meanings to their story.
At the beginning of the story, Beauty is defined through objectifying feminine attributes. In the first line, Beauty is looking “outside her kitchen window ”(Carter 137), her being in the kitchen represents conformity to feminine stereotypes. She is then described as being so pale that “you would have thought she was made of all snow” (carter 137). The whiteness of the snow symbolizes her purity. She represents a desire to conform to feminine sterotypes through her desire for the white rose Like Beauty, the beast is not free from conditional gender roles either. Being a lion-like animal, he is large and
Belle was kind to the Beast, and then she found her prince. It took courage to look into the eyes of someone that took away everything and see the good.
Beauty’s role in beauty and the beast glorifies her as a sweet girl who can find light in any darkness. She prefers to move forward in life rather than sulk in misery. Being such a positive female character allows her to fall in love with a man who is not of the society standards of handsome, name Beast. She was more intent on focusing on what he had to offer as a person. Karen Rowe states in “Feminism and Fairy Tales” “such alluring fantasies gloss the heroine's inability to act self-assertively, total reliance on external rescues, willing bondage to father and prince, and her restriction to hearth and nursery” (Rowe). The heroine being beauty in this case, doesn't have opinions or rights because her character wasn't created to. Rowe believes that fairytales have paved the way for our expectations towards what women and men should be doing and what romance is. Rowe argues that “These "domestic fictions" reduce fairy tales to sentimental clichés, while they continue to glamorize a heroine's traditional yearning for romantic love which culminates in marriage” (Rowe). Beauty’s character found herself in these “sentimental cliches” with her
Lyon”. Carter retells the well-known fairytale “Beauty and the Beast,” but her version is far from “classic.” It is a tale of self-discovery and rejection of female objectification. In the beginning of Carter’s retelling of the classic fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast,” Beauty is seen as a penniless, helpless girl, whom the rich, powerful and world-weary Beast forces to live in his house. When her father uses her as payment for his debt to the Beast she becomes an object. However, she rapidly becomes the more active, experienced, and adventurous character. Throughout the story, Beauty proves herself to be more than just a traditional fairy tale heroine, but in the beginning, she conforms to the paradigm. Just like many of Carter’s heroines, she must start within to be able to then break free from the restrictions and assumptions of patriarchal society. In the words of da Silva, “The daughter is conscious of her annihilation in the patriarchal society but she doesn’t have autonomy to overcome it.” Even though Beauty finds enjoyment in reading fairy tales while living with the Beast, it is as though despite living in a modern world with telephones and cars, Beauty wants to believe in the conventional “happily ever after.” By comparing Beauty to the immaculate snow upon which she gazes Carter emphasizes Beauty’s femininity, innocence, and virginity. By associating Beauty
Madame Le Prince De Beaumont wrote one of the first versions of Beauty and the Beast in 1745. She was a teacher and her intent was to teach her students moral lessons. She felt so strongly in these lessons that she turned them into a fairy tale to help her students grasp them. The story starts off with a merchant who had three daughters and three sons. The two older girls were very arrogant because they were rich. The sisters would not marry because they wanted to be wed to someone who was very rich. Beauty was the youngest and she had many suitors, but she refused to marry because she felt she was too young and she wanted to stay with her father longer. The merchant loses his wealth and is forced to move to the country. The two older sisters were devastated and lost all of their suitors. Beauty on the other hand was so nice that her suitors still wanted to marry her. A while after their move to the country, the merchant got a note that said his stuff had arrived. This would make them rich again. ?When the sisters got word of this they begged
Beauty and the Beast is a tale that describes the true meaning of family, and the sacrifices that occur. Beauty makes a lot of sacrifices throughout the tale for the purpose of family, unlike her two older sisters. “Beauty got up every day at four in the morning and started cleaning the house and preparing breakfast for the family. It was hard at first, because she was not used to working like a servant.”